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Home > Tipití > Vol. 4 > Iss. 1 (2006)

 

Abstract

The grotesque humor of pantomime and myth, the festive humor of play, and the humor used to criticize excesses in myth and comic sketches, can all be read as modes of native knowledge of the world and of the relationships holding this world together. Native exegesis of humorous imagery reveals crucial values related to Cashinahua concepts about sociality and ritual agency. These are iconic discourses about the quality of relations between people and between people and the animated world. The humor of the grotesque body, which is composed of parts of the body acting as autonomous forces, and the festive humor contaminating the owners of substances, have ritual efficacy, making cosmic powers act in favor of humanity. What kind of knowledge is expressed in humor? Festive and grotesque humor expresses a knowledge of how to act on the world, a knowledge the protagonists of mythic time lacked. In myth, the powerful owners of knowledge crucial to life were conquered and killed. In ritual, these same beings are “made happy” and seduced. Ritual agency thus subverts mythical agency to produce historical time, a time in which bodies are produced out of the constructive qualities of powerful beings known for their predatory capacities.

The Piaroa are people, living along tributaries of the middle Orinoco, who recognize that the dance of every bodily process participates in a poisonous, primordial design of things. This paper explores the relation of sensory processes and the cosmic to Piaroa ways of knowing and doing their arts of the culinary. In so doing it is an expedition into ethnopoetics. My focus is upon the interplay of two contrasting narrative genres—the sublime and grotesque realism—as used by shamanic chanters to unfold the manifold ways in which bodily processes and sensory life are intimately involved in ways of knowing. The imagery of the sublime evokes the beautiful sensual capacities of the upper body, while that of grotesque realism dwells upon the poisonous expulsions, and openness, of the body’s nether parts. In both genres, bodily process is an important, often ambiguous, operator in the mastery of knowledge, and also in its loss. For Piaroa, human ways of knowing are always involved in the toxic, and thus are attached to the twinned processes of degeneration and regeneration. Poison, as an agent of transformation, is creative of life and it also can kill.

Les Piaroa, qui vivent le long des affluents du moyen Orénoque, sont de ceux qui reconnaissent que la danse de chaque processus corporel participe du dessin primordial empoisonné des choses. Cette communication explore l’interrelation des processus des sens et du cosmique et les manières Piaroa de savoir et de faire les arts culinaires. Ce faisant, je ferai une expédition dans l’ethnopoétique. Cet exposé traitera de l’interaction de deux genres contrastés, le sublime et le réalisme grotesque, tels qu’utilisés par les chants chamaniques pour déployer les diverses façons par lesquelles les processus corporels et la vie sensorielle sont intimement impliqués dans les manières de percevoir. L’imagerie du sublime évoque les belles capacités sensuelles du haut du corps, tandis que le réalisme grotesque traite des expulsions empoisonnées et des ouvertures des parties inférieures du corps. Dans les deux genres, les processus corporels sont un important opérateur, souvent ambigu, de la maîtrise du savoir, et également de sa perte. Pour les Piaroa, les manières de savoir sont toujours impliquées dans le toxique, et donc associés aux processus jumelés de dégénération et régénération: le poison, en tant qu’agent de transformation, est créateur de vie et peut aussi tuer.

O humor grotesco das pantomimas e dos mitos, o humor festivo das brincadeiras e o humor crítico dos excessos em mitos e sketches podem ser lidos como formas de conhecimento nativo sobre o mundo e sobre as relações que mantêm este mundo interligado. A exegese nativa da imagística humorística revela valores cruciais relacionados às concepções kaxinawa sobre socialidade e agência ritual. Estamos lidando com discursos icônicos sobre a qualidade das relações entre pessoas e entre pessoas e o mundo animado. O humor do corpo grotesco que faz dialogarem partes de corpos como forças autônomas e o humor festivo cujo riso contamina a moral dos “donos” das substâncias têm alta eficácia ritual, motivando forças cósmicas a agirem em prol da humanidade. Qual é o saber expresso pelo humor? O humor expressa um conhecimento de como agir sobre o mundo que os protagonistas dos mitos careciam. Nos mitos os poderosos donos de saberes cruciais à vida eram conquistados e mortos. No ritual, estes mesmos seres são “alegrados” e seduzidos. A agência ritual subverte o tempo mítico do conflito para produzir o tempo histórico, um tempo no qual pessoas são produzidas a partir das qualidades construtivas de seres poderosos conhecidos por suas capacidades predatórias.

The Piaroa are people, living along tributaries of the middle Orinoco, who recognize that the dance of every bodily process participates in a poisonous, primordial design of things. This paper explores the relation of sensory processes and the cosmic to Piaroa ways of knowing and doing their arts of the culinary. In so doing it is an expedition into ethnopoetics. My focus is upon the interplay of two contrasting narrative genres—the sublime and grotesque realism—as used by shamanic chanters to unfold the manifold ways in which bodily processes and sensory life are intimately involved in ways of knowing. The imagery of the sublime evokes the beautiful sensual capacities of the upper body, while that of grotesque realism dwells upon the poisonous expulsions, and openness, of the body’s nether parts. In both genres, bodily process is an important, often ambiguous, operator in the mastery of knowledge, and also in its loss. For Piaroa, human ways of knowing are always involved in the toxic, and thus are attached to the twinned processes of degeneration and regeneration. Poison, as an agent of transformation, is creative of life and it also can kill.

Les Piaroa, qui vivent le long des affluents du moyen Orénoque, sont de ceux qui reconnaissent que la danse de chaque processus corporel participe du dessin primordial empoisonné des choses. Cette communication explore l’interrelation des processus des sens et du cosmique et les manières Piaroa de savoir et de faire les arts culinaires. Ce faisant, je ferai une expédition dans l’ethnopoétique. Cet exposé traitera de l’interaction de deux genres contrastés, le sublime et le réalisme grotesque, tels qu’utilisés par les chants chamaniques pour déployer les diverses façons par lesquelles les processus corporels et la vie sensorielle sont intimement impliqués dans les manières de percevoir. L’imagerie du sublime évoque les belles capacités sensuelles du haut du corps, tandis que le réalisme grotesque traite des expulsions empoisonnées et des ouvertures des parties inférieures du corps. Dans les deux genres, les processus corporels sont un important opérateur, souvent ambigu, de la maîtrise du savoir, et également de sa perte. Pour les Piaroa, les manières de savoir sont toujours impliquées dans le toxique, et donc associés aux processus jumelés de dégénération et régénération: le poison, en tant qu’agent de transformation, est créateur de vie et peut aussi tuer.

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